Istanbul North Rail Crossing Project

pipeline

The Operation will finance the construction of the Istanbul North Rail Crossing (INRAIL), an approximately 127-km greenfield railway that will serve as a bypass for the Istanbul Metropolitan Area and provide for an overland crossing over the Bosphorus. INRAIL is being prepared and managed by the Directorate of General of Infrastructure Investments (AYGM) within the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure (MoTI), which will serve as Implementing Agency. The proposed railway bypass would start at or near the Çayırova station on the Asian side and end at the Çatalca station on the European side, crossing the Bosphorus Strait using the existing track space allocated on the Yavuz Sultan Selim (YSS) Bridge, also known as the Third Bridge, at the Bosphorus’ northern end. The bypass is proposed as an electrified, fully signalized, mixed-used line to carry passengers and freight. It will be connected to the Turkish national high-speed rail network, with the intended capacity of moving passenger trains at a top design speed of 160 km. per hour. Freight trains will move at up to 80-120 Km. per hour. The line will connect Istanbul Airport (IST) on the European side to the urban and inter-city railway network, as well as Sabiha Gokçen Airport (SAW) on the Asian side, thus facilitating (i) domestic and international air and rail passenger connectivity, and (ii) urban mobility within the Istanbul Metropolitan Area. The two airports will be the bypass line’s only two stations, with capacity to mobilize passenger flows and support multimodal logistics, including rail freight to air freight transfers. By completing a new high capacity crossing over the Bosphorus, INRAIL will complete the uninterrupted overland length of the rail-based Middle Corridor across Turkiye, further positioning the country as a transit hub and logistics base of the Middle Corridor. This would boost trade, attract revenue-generating transit traffic, and position Turkiye as a facilitator of global commerce. In addition to the Middle Corridor, the crossing would serve other intercontinental, import-export, and purely domestic trade corridors that pass through Istanbul, most notably (a) the proposed Iraq Development Road intercontinental link, and (b) Turkiye’s sizable volumes of exports to the European Union, a significant portion of which originate at points west of Istanbul. The crossing would also generate significant benefits to urban mobility and livability in Istanbul, by helping take heavy truck traffic off the roads that traverse the metropolitan area and incentivizing public transit adoption, thus reducing congestion and associated emissions of greenhouse gases and local pollutants from road vehicles, reducing wear-and-tear of local roads and motorways, and improving road safety.